


how to remember you're home

by a_good_soldier



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Meta, Non-Linear Narrative, Recovery, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5002999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A jumbled mess of scenes about Mark's return from Mars - and how Mars was defining, then significant, and then just backstory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to remember you're home

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [tin soldiers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758087) by [idrilka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka). 



> heavily inspired by all the incredible multimedia fics in the winter soldier fandom, and especially/most heavily [tin soldiers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1758087/chapters/3758717) by idrilka (although there are countless others & i sincerely advise you to just search multimedia & social media in the winter soldier tag). also, this fic straight up doesn't have an ending because I'm supposed to be writing a presentation right at this exact second, and I need to get it out into the world so i can free my brain. also is probably not very supported by canon or science since i googled about 3 things and called it research. sorry. hope you enjoy anyway

_Excerpt from The Full, Unedited Transcript of Mark Watney’s Video Logs from the 2035 Ares III Mission (NASA, 2036)._

SOL 42

So, like, here’s what I’m thinking. There are two ways this can go, both of which are equally horrifying. Either this shitty disco music literally drives me insane and I off myself just to be free, or I actually start enjoying it and spend the rest of my days fucking singing along to Abba. Jesus. I mean, either way, what a fuckin’ way to go.

SOL 43

[singing] Don’t go wasting your emotion, lay all your love on me [video cuts off]

SOL 44

I hate myself.

\--

**_Mars Hero Lauded After Return - But Was It All A Lie?_ **

“Holy shit,” Mark says, shoving the iPad in Beth’s face. “Can you believe this? This person thinks Ares III was a hoax. Holy shit.”

“Oh my god.” Beth crawls over the back of the couch to sit next to Mark. “Oh my god, Rick! Rick, come look at this.”

Rick pops his head in the door, hot dog in one hand and burger in the other. “Are you interrupting my God-given right to an all-American fourth of July celebration with your conspiracy theory blogs, Watney?” 

“This one’s actually relevant to us. Like, listen to this: _The video logs were released suspiciously soon after Mark Watney’s “return”_ \- I’m not joking here, the word return is literally in quotation marks - _despite the effort needed to edit and package them into saleable video files. In only 3 short months, the entire 600+ sol epic was released, branded with the NASA logo and advertised to millions of people worldwide. Is this another opportunity for the government’s subliminal messaging to reach us in our homes?_ Holy shit. This is the first paragraph. Like, there’s so much more.”

“Please stop reading about yourself and come watch the fireworks, asshole. You too, Beth, I don’t know how he got you hooked on that stuff.” Rick turned around quickly to return to Commander Lewis’ backyard, but he still couldn’t hide the fondness in his voice.

“Aww, you do care, pumpkin!” Beth teased. 

“C’mon kid, you know how important this thing is to Commander Lewis,” Rick called over Melissa’s distant _“I don’t even know how you fuckers got in my house.”_

“Yeah, all right,” Mark said, texting the link to Vincent Kapoor, who was technically his boss and also a serious NASA official. Vincent also had a severely lacking data plan (in 2038! the fuck!), which meant that texting him links to articles on the internet led to maximum annoyance.

Mark considered his relationship with Vincent to be one based on mutual trust and respect.

\--

“If you’re gonna watch these, I’m not staying.” 

“Okay, okay, no problem,” Chris said, closing the tab. The fucking logs were on youtube - it wasn’t bad enough that they’d been published for everyone who wanted to shell out thirty bucks, no, they had to go online for anyone with internet access to see. Goddamn.

Chris turned to Mark. “Is it okay if I watch them without you?”

Mark considered the potential risks. His complex calculations were as follows:

> CON: Will reveal deep mental scars which could potentially scare Chris off from a serious relationship  
>  PRO:  Will reveal sick memes and quick wit 

With those costs and benefits weighed, Mark shrugged. “Yeah, sure, why not,” he said, imagining Chris watching him slowly fall in and then out of and then in love again with the Bee Gees.

“Okay.” Chris kissed him softly, casually, like he was kissing someone he’d kissed so many times it was routine, which kind of made Mark’s hands shake a little bit. Chris cuddled closer and didn’t seem to notice, so Mark turned on Netflix and sent up a quick thank you to the space botany gods for bringing him home.

\--

_Excerpt from The Full, Unedited Transcript of Mark Watney’s Video Logs from the 2035 Ares III Mission (NASA, 2036)._

SOL 128

There are so many goddamn potatoes. Jesus Christ. Like, seriously, goddamn these fucking potatoes. If I have to look at another fucking potato once I get off this planet I’m gonna shoot myself in the fucking head. It’s the fucking potatoes that’ll get me, I swear to fucking God.

On another note, I’ve been drinking nothing but grape juice for the past two days. Turns out everyone hated grape juice, so we’ve got 10 orange juice bottles, 8 apple juice bottles, and 8 mango juice bottles, and we had 40 grape ones left. Can you believe these fuckers? They left me on a fucking desert planet with 40 grape juice bottles. Jesus. I’m never living with any of those shitheads again.

[eating potatoes]

I’ve also collected more samples from the soil outside. That’s pretty much the only shit I do, now that I’m waiting on the instructions for more rover hacking. I just collect dirt samples and move solar panels around.

I wonder if there’ll be a lifehack post dedicated to roverhacks. I hope so. I believe in you, Internet. If you ever find these video logs, make a roverhack page. Make me proud.

[end of video log]

\--

**9 Easy Ways To Make Your Mars Rover Life-Sustaining**

\--

SOL 174

This is gonna sound fucking stupid, so bear with me. Or don’t. I don’t control what you do, vague nebulous listener who doesn’t currently exist. Turn the fuckin’ sound off if you don’t like what you hear, asshole. It’s 3 am. Give me a break.

Anyway.

[pause]

So, I know it’s stupid. It’s a desert planet. I’m literally the only lifeform, except for these potatoes, which I created. I’m a god on this planet. I gave it life. I looked at the light and said this shit’s good or whatever. But it’s... [pause] Fuck. Sometimes, when it’s dark and I can’t sleep... it feels like something’s watching me, okay. I know. That’s fucking stupid. If anything was out there, it would’ve fuckin’ eaten me by now. But it’s just so fucking, I don’t know, so fucking quiet. I can’t hear anything. Jesus.

[end of video log]

\--

_Excerpt from Mark On Mars: A Literary Analysis of the Ares III Video Logs (Hensen, 2042)._

Watney fluidly melds sarcasm with heart-wrenching fatalism throughout his logs, a fascinating and ultimately successful coping strategy which lends readers a sense of engagement with him, not only as a public figure and hero, but also as a human being; one can attribute the commercial success of the video log transcripts and the videos themselves to the quality of his improvised monologues, structured within the video log format.

My work does not seek to attribute a purpose to Watney’s videos which clearly did not exist; he did not record them with the intention of ever having them seen by other people, and I do not wish to make such an erroneous claim. However, what this work does entail is the unprecedented analysis of the transcripts (and occasionally the visual content as well) as a literary work, rather than as scientific or sociological evidence.

In keeping with this, it seems fitting that the introduction to this book end with Mark Watney’s own words (from SOL 110) in his own immediately recognizable style, however unexpected its exposure to the general public may have been. 

> It’s not that I don’t think I’m going to come back. My point is, I’m doing all the work we were supposed to do on this mission while I can, since I know I’m gonna get a lot more tired once I really get into the rationing and have to start cutting up the rover and going out for further and further distances. [pause] So, uh, yeah. There you have it. Doing the dirty work so you don’t have to, or whatever. When you find my corpse, just give me a thumbs up and you’ve got yourself a pest control commercial.

\--

Sometimes Mark wakes up before his alarm, and there’s a silence before his ears start registering actual sounds. If Chris isn’t sleeping beside him, that silence lasts a little longer, because the faint creaks of his apartment are nothing compared to that man’s snoring.

The point is, that silence is terrifying. He opens his eyes whenever he doesn’t hear anything, just to check. (He knows he’s not on Mars. He knows. He knows.) He’s in his UChicago t-shirt and Canadian moose boxers (flannel is comfy as fuck, okay?), neither of which he had on Mars. He smells his bed. It smells like his sweat, but only slightly; it also smells like detergent and like the unshakeable house-smell that came with the place.

Sometimes he can go back to sleep, but sometimes he has to get up and pad around the house, feeling things around him to make sure they’re real. On Mars, he didn’t have a desk lamp shaped like an alligator. On Mars, he didn’t have a toaster. On Mars, he didn’t have a painting of a pug dressed up like Space King Henry VIII that his sister sent him as a welcome home gift. On Mars, he didn’t have a window that looked out at a condo across the street.

This is how Mark remembers that he’s home.

\--

“So, Mr. Watney, do you have anything else to say about your time on Mars? Anything you’d like our viewers to know?”

Mark resisted the urge to burp. “Uh, no, I’m good.”

The interviewer looked a little tense. “Nothing to add about the video logs? They’ve been a huge success across the country and even across the world. Do you have anything you want to share with your fans?” 

Mark thought to himself, and came to a decision. He looked straight at the camera. “I did consider jerking off for the camera when I was on Mars, but didn’t end up doing it. Now I kinda wish I had.”

The interviewer gulped. “Up next is your regular news report at 10! And thanks again to our special guest, Mark Watney!”

Teddy turned the TV off and looked at Annie.

“Got it,” she said. “No more Watney on TV.”

\--

**@watneybae** did u fuckin see this interview???  @markwattney @ares_three f fc k

**@markwattney** i know!!!! fuckf uck can u imagine if he had oh my godd

**@ares_three** bye. i am combusting. in my thirst

**@markwattney** petition to have mark jerk off for a camera on earth. no special occasion. just ‘cause

**@watneybae** petition seconded   

\--

“Have you watched the video logs?” Mark’s mouth says, without his permission, over _dinner_ , what the _fuck_. “Not that you had to, I was just- I mean, there’s like hours of those things.” Stop talking. “Just wondering. Never mind.”

Chris poked his foot with his own, which was adorable and also helped soothe Mark’s embarrassment. “I watched the first few, and then I stopped. It didn’t seem right to watch them when you were so obviously uncomfortable with other people seeing them.”

Mark shrugged again. “It’s different with you, though,” he said, not realizing it was true until the words hung there, for Chris to reject or not. “I mean, with people I know. Like if the crew got together and watched it, that would be fine. I wouldn’t be uncomfortable with that. It’s just the strangers. I don’t know why they’re so interested.”

“It’s because the logs are hours of watching a beautiful man talk about himself,” Chris said, smiling softly. That’s what got Mark the most about this guy - he was sincere about everything, even the stuff that was obviously said just to make other people smile.

“Aww, pudding,” Mark sighed, trapping Chris’ foot between his own. “You say the sweetest things.”

They kept eating for a few minutes, until Chris broke the silence. “Do you want me to watch them?”

“I don’t know. If you want to, I guess. It’s probably easier than me having to tell you everything that happened on Mars.”

“Well, I will, then. Can’t leave you all the Martian fun.” Chris grinned at him, and Mark couldn’t help but laugh.

\--

“You shouldn’t be out of bed, it’s only been a week.” Melissa pulled out another mug for Mark anyway. “You want some coffee?”

“Probably shouldn’t,” Mark said. “Doctor’s orders. Do we have any tea?”

Melissa nodded. “Sure thing. You want earl grey?”

“Anything’s better than fuckin’ potatoes, honestly,” Mark said, sitting down at the table closest to the kitchen. He watched Melissa pour him some tea, and waited silently through her quietly shaking shoulders. He probably should’ve said something, but by the time he realized, she was already heading back to him with redder eyes and a firm smile.

“What’re you looking forward to most once we get back to Earth?” Mark asked, heading off the inevitable my-fault-no-it’s-not-I’m-sorry-anyway-okay-bye at the pass.

“Having more than one pillow in my bed.” Melissa laughed. “Listening to my boyfriend’s recent purchase.”

“No, don’t tell me-”

“ABBA. Vinyl. Pristine condition.”

“ _No_ , Commander, how could you _do this_ to me-”

Mark stared in horror as Melissa started humming _Lay All Your Love On Me_. 

She grinned up at him from her coffee. “Something bothering you, Watney?”

“I can’t believe this is happening. Oh my god.”

She snorted into her coffee, and the two of them sat there, smiling. Mark risked putting his feet in Melissa’s lap, and she didn’t react except to rest her free hand on his legs. Wow. Human contact’s great.

Eventually Mark had to go back to sleep, so Melissa walked him back to his room. “Hey,” he said, just as she turned to leave. “I know you brooding hero types like to blame yourselves for things, but this one’s not on you. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good.”

As affirmations went, that probably wasn’t his best work, but Melissa just said, “All right, then. Thanks, Mark. Good to have you back,” and walked away.

\--

_Excerpt from The Full, Unedited Transcript of Mark Watney’s Video Logs from the 2035 Ares III Mission (NASA, 2036)._

SOL 343

So, as has probably been obvious for the past week or whatever, I’ve been using the rover camera for these. Now, this wouldn’t be relevant usually, but it does mean that I can make logs _while driving_. You know what that means? I can pretend there’s traffic! I can have Martian road rage! I have unlimited power! Hey! [makes 2 beeping sounds with mouth] Get the fuck out of my way, asshole!

Incidentally, I am now almost a quarter of the way to the Ares IV landing site. Great job, me.

SOL 343

I just came very close to flipping this thing over. It moves at a grand total of 10 kilometers an hour. I should probably stop pretending to be an angry driver. Jesus, I’m not gonna be able to drive with actual people around me when I get back to Earth. Rest in peace my driving career.

\--

“It took me the entire trip home to stop panicking every time someone stopped touching me,” Mark mumbled into the pillow. Mark always - or, well, since the Mars fuckup - used to sleep on his back, at first because he wanted to be able to jump out of bed at a moment’s notice, and later because he couldn’t take the risk of damaging his ribs by sleeping in any other position, so sleeping on his stomach, sprawled across a double bed and another breathing, living body was a luxury he’d never get tired of.

Chris rolled over and kissed him on the neck, lingering there. “I’m sorry,” he slurred, half-asleep already.

“No, don’t apologize,” Mark said, turning his head to steal a kiss. “It’s fine, I just thought, you know, we’re telling each other things about ourselves, or whatever. You should probably know I was touch-deprived as all hell, that’s all.”

Chris starfished over Mark’s body, wrapping him in all four of his limbs. “That’s understandable. Thanks for telling me.”

Mark smiled under the weight that pushed him into the mattress, stretched his arm out to open the window just for the reminder that breathable air didn't come from a machine, and went to sleep.


End file.
